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Mercy will set you free

It seems that this week my thoughts have been on mercy. Mercy is an amazing thing and especially God’s mercy toward us. What is mercy you might ask? My definition of God’s mercy is relying on God’s compassion when you are at the point in your circumstance where you are unable to help yourself. It’s when you do not have the means to fix your own problem and you call upon the Lord for His loving compassion and care.

The scriptures continue to remind us about God’s mercy. As a matter of fact, over and over again we are reminded that His mercy endures forever. We are also taught that His mercy toward us is renewed every morning. Thank God for that, because there are some days when you feel that you’ve depleted your mercy account.

In the gospels we are taught about a man who was blind and called on God for His mercy. Bartimaeus had been blind since birth, and one day as he was sitting begging for assistance — as was the custom of his day — he listened intently as he heard Jesus and a crowd of people passing by his way. Although under the law of Moses, he had no right to call out to Jesus, he decided he didn’t care what anyone thought or what was proper to the religious crowd and he called to Jesus and said, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” The Bible says that the crowd told him to be quiet and leave Jesus alone. I love Bartimaeus’ tenacity, the scripture says that he cried even more the louder. I love when people say, “I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me, I just want to get closer to the Lord — I have to have the attention of the Master!”

Mark records in his gospel that Jesus stopped and asked for this blind man to be brought to him. Now as I was reading this, I wondered why Bartimaeus didn’t cry out for Jesus to heal him, but rather he called out to Jesus for mercy? I believe Bartimaeus could tell from the very sound of Jesus that He was a merciful man. I believe he could hear the compassion in His voice and he knew if he could just get his attention that mercy would make all the difference in his life. Sure enough, Jesus asked him what he would like for Him to do and Bartimaeus then said, “I want to receive my sight.” And we all know the rest of the story, Jesus healed this blind man and made him whole.

What a testimony of the mercy of God. When you are that point in your life where you simply don’t have the ability or means to solve your own problem, call out to God for mercy. His mercy endures forever. His mercy will make you whole. His mercy is renewed each day for you. As a matter of fact, we discover the He actually sits on the mercy seat — hallelujah!

But with all of this mercy, don’t forget to be merciful towards others. Jesus taught in His Sermon on the Mount that the merciful are blessed because then they themselves will receive mercy when they need it. Why is it that sometimes for ourselves, we want mercy but we require judgment for others? Mercy me — we need to be merciful toward each other. But we also need to remember to call out to God for His mercy — it will set you free.

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Georgina Kennedy is the pastor of Solid Rock Family Worship Center located at 2628 Pulaski Highway in Columbia.